What Is an LED Display?

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)

Led Display | Source

Electronic Led Displays

Led displays are very eye-catching forms of advertisement signs that use light emitting diodes as a source of light. They are flat panels that contain within tens or even hundreds of leds of varied colors that display readable advertisements that seem to move from left to right or in the direction people often read. Other times, flat panels display images of people, famous holiday characters, or famous trademarks, such a Santa Clause, Coca Cola, McDonalds, etc.

Led displays are used in a variety of forms and with distinct purposes. They can often be seen outdoors as big advertisements, announcing some kind of event in stadiums, theaters, concerts, and other type of social event. They´re also used in cities, such as in stop signs, traffic direction signals, destination displays in airports, train and bus stations or in a city´s transportation system. Typically, they´re used as advertisement signs inside commercial stores and buildings.

Valentine Led Display

Valentine Led Display | Source

Multicolored LEDs

Multicolored Leds | Source

Holiday Led Displays

During the holiday season, it is very common to see bright displays of light made from LEDs in the front yards of houses or commercial buildings, which sometimes display the images of people, famous characters, such as Santa Clause, or famous trademarks, such as Coca Cola.

Most led displays used outdoors and indoors are the most conventional kind of led displays used. This type of display uses individual LEDs of varied colors, typically, red, green and blue, that are spaced evenly around the panel to give form to a full color pixel. Electronic circuits are often used to control the blending and diffusion of different color variations to produce text or images on the led display.

Multi-colored LEDs are often used to form light displays of different colors. This increases the light producing capability of the led display, producing dynamic colors.

They´re also used in a number of electronic devices, such as radios, TV´s, washing machines, etc., although, they´re usually used to attract the attention of people, led displays can also be used as a form of light for illumination.

Airport Led Display

Led Display at the Airport | Source

Led Display on Public Transportation

Led Display on Public Transportation | Source

Halloween Led Display

Halloween led Display | Source

Alphanumeric Led Displays

Alphanumeric Led Displays | Source

Eye Catching Led Displays

Other led displays use surface mounted devise panels (SMD). An SMD panel is composed of diminutive LEDs the size of a pinhead of red, green and blue colors mounted on a single panel. This panel is then controlled by a computer.

The main difference between SMD and the conventional led displays is the brightness as it is reduce significantly. These types of displays are most commonly used indoors where the less brightness is required, contrary to outdoors where the ambient brightness may reduce visibility, thus requiring more brighter led displays.

Led flashing displays are sometimes used to catch the attention of people either indoors to indicate the way out or promote a service or product, as well as outdoors, such as on the highway or airport to indicate the arrival or departure of an air flight. More sophisticated led displays can even flash, displaying multiple colors or fading gradually through a sequence of colors.

Alphanumeric led displays were used widely during the 70s. These types of displays could usually only show the numbers and a limited collection of letters, and were very common in calculators, wrist watches, alarm clock and other electronic devices.

What’s an LED TV?

It´s a kind of TV that uses LEDs to illuminate the TV´s display by placing the LEDs in the background of the display or along the edges of the display. LEDs used in TVs use less power than plasma TVs and LCD TVs which use fluorescent tubes. The advantage of using LEDs in TVs is that during dark scenes, the LEDs are shut off completely, giving sharper dark scene images.

Unlike other TVs which use cathode-fluorescent lights, to illuminate the screen, LED TVs uses LEDs in the same way; however, LED TVs, where the LEDS are placed in the perimeter of the display have become ultrathin. They can be as thin as 1¨ with a 32" by 55" screen.

Led TV

Led TV | Source

LEDs are extensively used in light displays due to their lower energy consumption, high durability and other features. They emit light and less heat than incandescent light bulbs, and have a working durability of between 35,000-50,000 hours or 4-5.7 years of uninterrupted use; however, low currents and temperatures can shorten their life span.

LEDs can emit light of different colors and can also be dimmed by lowering the current or by pulse modulation. Led displays are not only used for advertisement purposes, they can also be used as a source of illumination in different settings, such as in aquariums where the less heat output of leads is ideal to maintain aquarium temperatures, in plant growth as the use of led displays increase photosynthesis in plants and in backstage scenarios where the use light displays using LEDs reduces the heat produced by conventional backstage lighting.

Interesting Facts

The largest led display in the world is located in Beijing, China and measures 250 by 30 meters (820 by 98 ft.).